And time goes on and on, and Rose, gentle, kind, a very angel of mercy to the poor, devoted to her husband and her parents--rarely smiling--never laughing--shivers at the sight of a blond baby. Four years had passed after her second loss, and her silence was deceiving them all. I think, when one Sunday in church a strange, little, restless creature in her pew crept along the seat and put its baby hand on hers, and poor Rosie at that touch had fainted dead away, after that they understood.
One day I saw “Little Knights” standing uncovered at the side of two tiny graves. A small white stone at their head had carved upon it two rosebuds and beneath, three words, clear and plain: “Our little buds!” I murmured the words half aloud, and “Little Knights,” with tears on his cheeks, said: “Yays, yays--youst liddle puds--but, oh, whad sweet, liddle puds dey were! Gott give me youst von Rose--full bloomed unt perfect--but dese puds? _No! no!_ He say dey may not bloom here!”
He looked up into the clear, far, far blue, and smiled and nodded, and said, very low: “Oop dere--I think He make ’em bloom out full--dem puds! I like I can see dat! I don’t want to leaf my Rose--I stay here as long as she stay--but I vant so much to see my liddle puds bloom!” and then he placed on each wee grave a beautiful rosebud, and trotted away home to his good, old wife and his adored Rosie!
“Let me see,” I added, “this is Saturday--is it not? Well, to-morrow, before four o’clock in the afternoon, should you go to W---- Cemetery, you would see the ‘little hop o’ my thumb’ I pointed out to you a while ago come trotting in, holding two beautiful, exquisitely beautiful, rosebuds in his hand; would see him make his way to those two tiny graves, and without shame, fall on his knees, and with one arm stretched across the graves, humbly pray. Then kissing both buds, he would place one on each grave--then, with falling tears, leave the cemetery--and that has been done and will be done, winter as well as summer, by this poor, faithful ‘Little Old Knights.’”
I glanced at my companion and was amazed to see her eyes were brimming, and as she dashed the tears away, the shameless little turncoat cried--“And do you now tell me you can’t see poetry in life--when you have known a man like that? Why, there is all the poetry of ‘fatherhood’ right before your eyes!”